Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

“ In France, the mostly working-class descendants of postcolonial immigrants from North and Sub-Saharan Africa   were the first victims of the economic crisis that began in the 1980s, and were subjected to segregation, whether in accessing housing or jobs or in their contacts with the authorities (racial profiling by the police). Given the growing importance of questions of identity in French public debate, it’s not surprising that some young people express their rejection of a society that has no room for them by stressing their personal identity — religion, country of origin and race (defined by the colour of their skin). The poorest are deprived, for socioeconomic reasons, of resources that would let them diversify their social connections and affiliations. We will never understand the world we live in if we forget that social class, defined in terms of economic and cultural capital, remains the determining factor to which other dimensions of identity are tied.” —Stéphane Beaud &

 A guide to students

We need to remember a decade-long song sung by Western and non-Western media, academics and pundits: “Transitional justice”, “transitional justice”, “transitional justice”, ad nauseam.  As long the ‘revolution’ is not about material equality that threatens class interests at home and the major powers and international institutions interests and domination, is championed and “human rights” and “democracy” are the catch words that must prevail in the same way ‘Arab Spring’ phrase has prevailed. And we can talk about development everyday as long as it is the type of ‘development’ dictated by the same socio-economic system and the same ideology.   A return to the police state?

 Release women prisoners of conscience

 A chapter from A Critical Political Economy of the Modern Middle East

“ Marine Le Pen, champion of the French far right, has come within reach for the first time of beating President Macron in next year’s election, according to a poll. The Harris survey, premised on a replay of the run-off in the 2017 election, has alarmed the president’s supporters and the political establishment because it suggests that   Ms Le Pen   is close to breaching the “glass ceiling” of French politics. The barrier was based on the longstanding assumption that an absolute majority of voters would never back a far-right candidate. If the May 2022 run-off were staged now, Ms Le Pen would have 48 per cent of the vote, with Mr Macron on 52 per cent, according to a poll carried out online on January 19...” Source: The Times UK

 

 كيف يخلق النظام من شعبه بركانا؟

Eight politicians from Germany's left-wing party – Die Linke – have signed a  solidarity statement  calling for the immediate release of all political detainees, which explicitly highlights the fate of six detained leftist activists, journalists and trade unionists.  The campaign by German left-wing politicians, in response to Sisi’s reprisals against the labour movement, has coincided with a wave of strikes and protests in Egypt’s steel industry. Germany’s Die Linke Campaign to release political prisoners in Egypt

“With  Charles VIII’s siege of Naples, not one scourge but two entered Italy. Before 1494, Syphilis probably did not exist in Europe; returnees from Columbus’ first voyage from America, who had contracted the disease in America, very likely introduced the disease to Spain. Spanish mercenaries at the siege of Naples (1494-5) suffered an epidemic that almost certainly syphilis , whence it spread throughout the continent. As the plague spread, the French called it ‘Neapolitan disease’, while Neapolitans preferred to call it ‘the French disease’.” —Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital and European States – AD 990-1992 , 1992, p. 77 “A number of scholars have commented on how diseases ‘becomes adjectival’ since the late 1980s when Susan Sontag first highlighted how epidemics become a proxy for social disorder when metaphors are applied to them and ‘the horror of the disease is imposed on other things’. More recently, in a book that examined the legacies of plague in literature, theory and film,

  Colour posters since 1930s

While reading the features of fascism in the article below, I am tempted to list some of the internal signs that modern “liberal democracies” exhibit, and how it breeds fascism/lays the fertile ground for fascistic tendencies, especially when the economy enters into a crisis:  - the increase in the number of voters supporting Donald Trump in the last American election.   - the European Court of Justice rule in favour of banning the slaughtering of animals according to the Muslim and Jewish way in two regions of Belgium. - conformism: everybody must follow the liberal form in how they dress, for example in France. - redefining ‘freedom of speech’ and ‘secularism’ in order to repress and marginalise minorities, and ultimately to disable resistance. Example: France. - stifling dissent and alternative views and encouraging conformism:  the Department for Education guidance said schools in England “should not use any resources from organisations that had expressed a desire to end capitalism

Undoing Lenin

 Workers and Change

Persis Love, Lusophine Stories 

 Navalny’s return and left strategy

 ثورة يناير ليست مجرد ذكرى

A few years ago, Terry Eagleton, then professor of English literature at Manchester University, reckoned that  “for the first time in two centuries, there is no eminent British poet, playwright or novelist prepared to question the foundations of the western way of life.” No Shelley speaks for the poor, no Blake for utopian dreams, no Byron damns the corruption of the ruling class, no Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin reveal the moral disaster of capitalism. William Morris, Oscar Wilde, HG Wells, George Bernard Shaw have no equivalents today. Harold Pinter was the last to raise his voice. Among the insistent voices of consumer-feminism, none echoes Virginia Woolf, who described  “the arts of dominating other people … of ruling, of killing, of acquiring land and capital.” — J ohn Pilger

 The troubling case of Maâti Monjib highlights Morocco’s climate of repression

  A solidarity campaign

 The expropriation of Kurdish property in Syria and the theft of their organs in Ankara

 الإعلام العربي يواجه تهديدات خطيرات منذ 10 سنوات

 Defend woman labour leader Parvin Mohammadi

 “ Yesterday’s Man: The Case Against Joe Biden  by Branko Marcetic, exposes the forgotten history of Joe Biden, one of the United States’ longest-serving politicians, and one of its least scrutinized. Over nearly fifty years in politics, the man called “Middle-Class Joe” served as a key architect of the Democratic Party’s rightward turn, ushering in the end of the liberal New Deal order and assisting the political takeover of the radical right. Far from being a liberal stalwart, Biden  often outdid even Reagan, Gingrich ,  and Bush, assisting the right-wing war against the working-class, and ultimately p aving the way for Trump.   The most comprehensive political biography of someone who has tried for decades to be president,  Yesterday’s Man  is an essential read for anyone interested in knowing the real Joe Biden and what he might do in office.” Americans must fight Joe Biden and the Democratic Party’s neoliberal agenda. —Jacobin Magazine “We are now likely to witness the cycle repea

The man who called black people “coons, referred to Muslim women as “letterboxes” and “bank robbers”, Jews as “stingy” and women as “hot totty”, demands politics be “civil and kind.”

 Climate activism and the fetishization of nonviolence

 In memory of Patrice Lumumba

Secular liberals destroyed the Arab uprisings. Don’t let it happen again.

Martin Luther King’s anticapitalism Related Sanitising King’s radical legacy Big business is hijacking our radical past

This is a very engaging paper. A must read. Capitalist Totality and Geopolitical Fragmentation

On the silencing of Trump by tech giants. “Ms Merkel said through her spokesman that the US government should follow Germany’s lead in adopting laws that restrict online incitement, rather than leaving it up to platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to make up their own rules.” FT It is also the same German government that attacks those who criticise Israel. Example: the BDS movement in Germany. France’s finance minister Bruno Le Maire told France Inter on Monday that he was “shocked” by Twitter’s move. He added: “Digital regulation should not be done by the digital oligarchy itself . . . Regulation of the digital arena is a matter for the sovereign people, governments and the judiciary.” FT France and free speech? No comment. One has only to look at the recent events in the country. John Naughton in Opinion section on the Guardian opined that the silencing of Trump highlights “the authoritarian power of tech giants.” Yes, Mr, Naughton, but you cannot control what you don’t own.  He t

The rise and fall of a sex cult leader

“Since nearly all independent Arab films rely on European capital for finance, productions are usually shaped by what the west expects the Arab world to be, and are ultimately evaluated by western critics with little to no knowledge of the region.” How the ‘Arab Spring’ changed cinema

 Jihad, Empire and the Challenge of Solidarity

He was 98 percent right in what he said 10 months ago.

“Good to see chickens return to the roost. For a decade or more the US has made a practice of claiming that any election where an anti-US president wins the election was fraudulent. The colour revolution scenario is then supposed to go from demonstrations to storming the assembly. We saw this in Ukraine, Bolivia, Venezuela. Biden and the US establishment had no compunction at cheering on those who invaded the Assembly in Ukraine, had no compunction in hailing losers as winners in Venezuela and Bolivia. But if you practice that abroad, do not be surprised if it comes home.” —Paul Cockshott “ Given the United States’ long heritage of imperial control of much of the planet’s wealth, ecological destruction and political decisions, Wednesday’s mobs at the Capitol building should hardly come as a surprise to Americans on the left or the right. In recent history, Americans have shown little resistance to the imperial efforts of the US abroad—from the wars in Korea to Vietnam to Iraq and Afgha

  “ Syria has tended to be analysed through the prism of Western security studies, with its emphasis on Middle Eastern terrorism, or the geopolitics of imperialism. This article, however, looks at events from a grassroots social movements perspective, homing in on revolutionary self-organisation and the impact of Western aid on it. Asad’s counter-revolution has resulted in the largest ever United Nations aid operation, estimated at $30 billion, alongside aid provided bilaterally by the United States, the UK, France and others. Since the 1980s, aid has been channelled increasingly through non-governmental organisations (NGOs) rather than ­transferred directly to states. Academics use the term “NGOisation” to understand the consequences of this “aid chain” of states, international NGOs (INGOs), diaspora NGOs and local NGOs, in particular the incorporation of autonomous grassroots organisations into the official aid system.  We recognise that humanitarian assistance from the Gulf states h

 خمس سنوات بعد إطاحة طاغية تونس الحركات الاجتماعية تمهد لثورة جديدة

 The Persistence of Orientalism: Anglo-American Historians and Modern Egypt

From an old article I have selected some points that are still relevant today after 10 years of the beginning of the Tunisian ‘revolution’. In fact, the situation today is worse than in 2014. None of the social aspirations that sparked its December 2010 uprising have been fulfilled. Was bringing the Islamists into the political fold a gamble that paid off? Yes for those who maintained that their coming to power would not be irreversible. Yes also for their enemies, who predicted that once they were in power, they would reveal their obsession with identity and religion, and the limitations of their economic and social policy. “With [the Islamists] we are pre-Adam Smith and David Ricardo,” Hamma Hammami, spokesman for the leftwing Popular Front, told me. ‘The Muslim Brothers’ political economy is a rent-based economy; it’s about parallel trade. It isn’t about production, or wealth creation; it isn’t about agriculture, industry or infrastructure; and it isn’t about reorganising education

In one of the richest cities on earth. This was already going on a few years before the pandemic. “In recent years, food bank usage in the UK has risen sharply following 10 years of government austerity measures, welfare reforms and a widening gulf between earnings and living costs. With the economic downturn brought on by the pandemic, which has further exacerbated existing inequalities, food banks across the UK are struggling to meet demand.” A day in the life of a London food bank

The brothers who terrorised a Libyan town Related The Western powers that helped destroy Libya A 2013 paper by Alan Kuperman argued that NATO went beyond its remit of providing protection for civilians and instead supported the rebels by engaging in regime change. It argued that NATO's intervention likely extended the length (and thus damage) of the civil war, which Kuperman argued could have ended in less than two months without NATO intervention. The paper argued that the intervention was based on a misperception of the danger Gadaffi's forces posed to the civilian population, which Kuperman suggests was caused by existing bias against Gadaffi due to his past actions (such as support for terrorism), sloppy and sensationalistic journalism during the early stages of the war and propaganda from anti-government forces. Kuperman suggests that this demonization of Gadaffi, which was used to justify the intervention, ended up discouraging efforts to accept a ceasefire and negotiated

  How to defeat Trumpism Related A far-right movement that outlasts Trump

 The joy for being an absolute beginner—for life

I think the part about ‘scarcity of water’ is misleading. How our precarious climate shaped the Arab spring Related Water in the Middle East

 How a tale of murderous class warfare parallels US politics

  University College London apologises for role in promoting eugenics

“ The American media have largely echoed this language. The storming of the Capitol, we were told, was something that happened in a ‘banana republic’, not in America. (No mention of the fact that the ‘banana republics’ of Latin America were corrupt and authoritarian in part thanks to American meddling.) The presence of raucous, overwhelmingly white militants armed with guns stirred comparisons with Nazi Germany, Afghanistan and Syria, as if the many available and suitable comparisons from American history had been declared off-limits, threats to our amour propre. What to call the mob provoked a great discussion – ‘protesters’? ‘dissidents’? ‘insurrectionists’? – until, finally, much of the liberal press settled on describing them as ‘terrorists’, the word we reserve for all that is evil and un-American, and usually Middle Eastern. The use of the T-word represented a belated recognition of how dangerous a threat the far right has become. But it was also a consoling flight from realities

 It gives feminism a bad name

‘Due to travel restrictions the United States is forced to organise a coup at home this year.’ —Andrew Burgin In 2000 they were telling us how by 2020 globalisation would deliver new types of cars, planes, etc and prosperity for all. We ended up learning how to wash our hands. —N. M.

 and the freedom of believers

 ‘America has entered the Weimar era’ by the author of Dilemmas of Domination

I am very moved by the plight of the front line chief executives, the ‘masters of the universe’, in Britain. How life would be without them and ‘their contribution’ to the nation’s wealth and well-being? FTSE chief executives

 The opium of the Palestinian people

Morocco and the EU will benefit more after ‘Normalisation’ with Israel. Fish, phosphates and tomatoes

 New crackdown on teachers’ rights

Here is how the Capitol building was defended against the Black Lives Matter protesters. It reflects the white supremacist nature of the state, not of Trump’s administration. So was with the war crimes committed by American and British troops against Iraqis. So was the crimes committed by Australian elite troops against Afghanis. Trump supporters has gone this far because the state forces have been sympathetic. ‘Riot on the Hill’

A very good piece on Republicanism and freedom of expression

 Forecast for 2021

 A desperate attempt to seal a legacy. It fails

 ترامب والعفو عن قتلة العراقيين

I am surprised of the no extradition court rule. Prisoner for free speech

“The first thing one must know is that it has nothing to do with Corona and everything to do with saving the Italian government from Signor Salvini.   The second thing is that it has nothing to do with European solidarity either.” Winners All

“The Arab regimes have used every opportunity to sell out Palestinian rights to advance their own interests”

 An American view A history of deadly meddling

光棍儿 Unmarried Man

Two Revolutions: The Haitian Revolution 1804 The Cuban Revolution 1959

  Review of Machineries of Oil: An Infrastructure History of BP in Iran

Yves Hayat. — «   Brexit   », de la série «   Parfum de révolte   », 2016. Courtesy Galerie Mark Hachem, Paris The COVID pandemic slump and the underlying weakness of British capital are much more damaging to the UK's economic future than Brexit. Brexit is just an extra burden for British capital to face; as it also will be for British households. The Brexit deal

 82 major brands have slaves working in their supply chains